Hi,
We are back to the monthly release updates. Let's see what
news there is
to tell you for March...
Release goals
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After adding the g77 to gfortran transition to the list and
deferring the
"packages have to build correctly in dirty
chroots" goal to lenny+1, we've
decided to freeze the release goal list [1]. We've also
changed the format
of the published list to something machine parseable for
easier data
mining.
We've seen quite promising progress with some of our goals:
* debmake: Done.
* python2.5 transition: There have been filed quite a few
bugs
about differences in memory management between python2.4
and python2.5.
These are usually easily patched.
* gcc-4.3 transition: The switch to gcc-4.3 as default
compiler
will happen soon (see below), so all of these bugs will
become release
critical.
* UTF8 in control files: Most of these have been fixed now
and are just
waiting for transition to testing.
* LSB headers in init scripts: Many packages have been
updated and
running a dependency based init system now works for most
use cases.
However, there are still a lot of bugs open against
fringe packages.
* dash: Build problems with /bin/dash as default shell have
almost all
been solved. A new round of bugs were filed about
bashisms in /bin/sh
scripts. You are invited to squash these at the BSP in
April.
* piuparts-clean archive, doublebuild: These release goals
could
profit from more attention.
armel architecture
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Packages built for the armel architecture are now available
from
ftp.debian.org. Testing migrations scripts have been
considering armel for
some days now as non-blocking architecture. We hope that
lenny/armel will
soon converge to proper lenny, but the final decision on
inclusion of
armel in the set of release architectures has *not* yet been
completed.
Release schedule
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There haven't been any changes in our release schedule.
Please note that we want to release lenny in *6 months*, so
only upload
software that you can (and will) stabilize until then.
Please refer to our last release update [2] for a full
schedule. Note that
this means we are entering the very soft freeze now.
BSP Marathon
~~~~~~~~~~~~
At time of writing, we have 460 open RC bugs, which is 460
too many. A
coordinated effort is needed to reduce this number, so we've
decided to
resurrect last year's very successful BSP marathons. As a
reminder, we
still have a 0-day NMU policy in effect.
Please note that in a BSP, you shouldn't just NMU every RC
bug you see.
While you are working on a package, check for other
low-hanging fruits
(like translation updates, typos that can easily be fixed,
...) and fix
them in your NMU. On the other hand, if you notice that a
package looks
unmaintained, refrain from fixing the bugs for now and try
to find out if
the package should be removed or adopted by another
maintainer instead.
To give our BSPs a more targetted feeling, we want to assign
one group of
RC bugs and one release goal to each weekend:
BSP on weekend 2008-03-07 to 2008-03-09
---------------------------------------
+ Fix release critical FTBFS bugs detected QA archive
rebuilds [3]
+ Fix python2.5 and gcc-4.3 migration problems [4] [5]
+ Do first upgrade tests and report bugs
BSP on weekend 2008-04-04 to 2008-04-06
---------------------------------------
+ Fix remaining FTBFS bugs
+ Fix problems around the init system [6] [7]
+ Check debian-installer and the installation process
+ Start working on release and upgrade notes, collect items
that need to
mentioned in these documents
BSP on weekend 2008-05-01 to 2008-05-04
---------------------------------------
+ Fix piuparts problems [8]
+ Mass upgrade tests
At the moment, we still haven't found hosts for all real
life BSPs - so
please check out if you can organize something. Please use
[9] for
coordination! There is also a small howto [10] with facts to
think about
before organizing a real life BSP.
Package team news
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* gcc: The default compiler version will be switched to 4.3
in the next
few days. No big changes for C packages are expected, but
the C++
header files have seen a thorough dependency cleanup.
Some C++ packages
will fail to build due to headers which now need to be
included
explicitly.
* Iceweasel/Firefox and other Mozilla stuff.
A xulrunner 1.9 should be uploaded to Debian quite soon,
either as a
new source package in unstable or as a xulrunner update
in
experimental. This will probably happen at the same time
xulrunner
1.9 beta4 is released.
As other news, the mozilla-stuff packaging team plans for
lenny to
push iceweasel 3 (based on xulrunner) to ease the
security team work.
Iceweasel-3 betas could be uploaded to experimental at
some point in
a not so far future, depending on the team available
time.
The Team's plans with respect to iceape and icedove are
unclear at the
moment as it's unsure which new upstream releases will
happen in time
for lenny.
* KDE:
There may be a possibility to include KDE4 in lenny. The
efforts on
KDE4.1 have been quite promising and seem to be leading
to a desktop
environment which can fully replace KDE3. The KDE team
will provide
betas and release candidates of the 4.1 release in
experimental. Anyone
interested is encourage to try them out and file any bugs
found.
In the event that KDE4.1 is on time, and there are no
major issues, an
upload to unstable in order to include it in lenny is
possible. The
actual decision has been deferred for now.
Tricks from the Release Team
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One might want to look at the 'Buildd information page' [11]
when one is
unsure about the wanna-build status of a package [12] or
about the failure
message in a build log.
Lenny version
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For reading this far, you receive the small reward of the
knowledge that
Lenny will be shipped as Debian 5.0.
Cheers,
Marc
--
http://release.debian.org
Debian Release Team
Footnotes:
[1] http://rele
ase.debian.org/lenny-goals.txt
[2] http://release.debian.org/emails/release-update-200801
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=d
ebian-qa lists.debian.org&tag=qa-ftbfs&dist=testing
[4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?us
ers=debian-releaselists.debian.org&tag=goal-python2.5&dist=test
ing
[5] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=tbm
cyrius.com&tag=ftbfs-gcc-4.3&dist=testing
[6] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.
cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devellists.alioth.debian.org&dist=testing
[7] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?us
ers=debian-releaselists.debian.org&tag=goal-dash&dist=testing
[8] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?us
ers=debian-releaselists.debian.org&tag=piuparts-stable-upgrade&
dist=testing
[9] http://wiki.debian
.org/BSPMarathon
[10] http://wiki.debian.
org/HostingBSP
[11] http://build
d.debian.org/~jeroen/status/
[12] http://www.debian.org/devel/buildd/wanna-build-states
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